I am all over the place today. It might be lack of sleep or too much caffeine to make up for the lack of sleep — or both? But here we are. Some of this stuff is pretty new, some of it a little old. I was just interested in what might be written about Sun Ra lately, and came across this fascinating spoken history of making “Space Is The Place” (1974) featuring members of his band. The rigorous, grueling conditions Sun Ra put his musicians through reminds me of similar treatment by Captain Beefheart, another eccentric genius from that era of experimental music. I don’t know if Sun Ra and Beefheart ever met, but I wonder what they thought of each other; at least, I can’t imagine Beefheart not having listened to Sun Ra’s music, but I would not be surprised if a Jazz master like Sun Ra had never heard of an obscure rock musician like Beefheart. Now I have a time travel fantasy of arranging a meeting between the two, a collision of sensibilities, so wildly alike and yet not, that could disrupt the path of history and, who knows, save us from our present timeline? Speaking of timelines: Chuck Wendig proposes breaking up the Star Wars properties. The canon is out of control.
The College Admissions Scandal Could Have Lasting Impacts for Disabled People
By Brittney McNamara
“Ableism is rampant in academia and it seems like every few days there’s a professor writing a blog about how they don’t like to provide accommodations, or they think they should be able to ban laptops to stop Johnny from surfing Facebook, while Franklin may need it to be able to take notes,” Cokley said. “I have no doubt students will feel increased pressure not to disclose [their disability], and as a result will struggle to complete their coursework due to being afraid of being called a ‘fraudster’ when asking for access to tools that they are entitled to by law.”
Sun Ra: “There’s a lot of strange stuff that goes on around the pyramids – why don’t you bring a tape?”
By Tom Pinnock
‘SCOTT: When I auditioned for Sonny, he said, “Look, I work for the creator, and my band is the creator’s band. If you want money, fame or fortune, you don’t wanna work with me, because I work for the Creator.” And he went on to talk about a few other things, then he repeated, “If you want money, fame or fortune…” That was the first time I sat with him, but I found that whenever you talked to Sun Ra you would hear about the Creator.’
How Did Reading and Writing Evolve? Neuroscience Gives a Clue
By Derek Hodgson
“Recent extensive brain imaging of the visual cortex as people read text has provided important insights into how the brain perceives simple patterns. In my new paper, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, I analyse such research to argue that the earliest human-made patterns were aesthetic rather than symbolic, and describe what that means for the evolution of reading and writing.”
Star Wars: A Modest Proposal
By Chuck Wendig
“One of the other problems is that a single timeline is essentially treated as a history — it’s why canon is a tough nut to crack, because canon treats stories less like stories and more like a history book. Everything becomes the fucking Silmarillion. Everything becomes binary — er, not the binary language of moisture vaporators, but rather, meaning things in the stories are either TRUE or they are FALSE, and realistically, in a connected canonical timeline, everything must be true, and nothing can disagree. Even though actual history books are full of disagreement (which is why historians are a thing). Because every single story informs every other single story — and the whole body of storytelling! — it means canon is a pair of goddamn zip-ties that gets tighter and tighter as more material is added, as you wriggle around.”
